This Blog is an alternative for me to a Christmas newsletter. I have found that when you go travelling you get involved with a number of activities and it may be difficult to remember them all and there may not be time to tell one's friends and family! Is that something to do with the aging brain? Maybe that or maybe we are all becoming distracted thinkers with shorter attention spans as a result of being addicted to our electronic devices. A solution to this is to keep a diary but better still to record the diary in a Blog like this one.
What have I learned about Australia over the years? My father emigrated there when I was 21. I visited him several times - in Tamborine Mountain (near Brisbane) and in Sydney. He died aged 92 in 2000. I used to manage to get funding to go to conferences either on Water Quality or Injury Prevention and then would visit him at the same time.
Some years ago I read "The Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes, published in 1987. This is probably the most detailed account ever published of the first settlement by the British when the first voyage of those "Transported" starting in 1787. We plan to visit Port Arthur in Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) on this trip to revisit the history of this penal colony. I only recently appreciated that Britain only started the Transportation to Australia after the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Prior to this time Britain transported prisoners to the American Colonies but that destination dried up in 1776.
Recently our men's book club read "A fortunate Life" by A.B. Facey thanks to Tony who is Australian by birth. This classic Australian story was published in 1981. It is the account of a young Australian farm boy with no formal education whose early life in Western Australia was extraordinarily tough. He was at the Anzac beaches in 1915-1916 and was injured and evacuated home for rehabilitation. He wrote this account himself of his life before he died aged 87 in 1981.
A more recent publication (2000) by Bill Bryson, an American writer, "In a Sunburned Country" is an entertaining account of his travels in Australia. His writing seems to me similar to Paul Theroux, many of whose books I have read in the past. I am hoping this Blog will include some stories of events along the way that may have been inspired by the writings of Bryson and Theroux.
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